Feminist Media Studies

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From can-do girls to insecure and angry: Affective

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dissonances in young women’s post-recessional media

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Journal: Feminist Media Studies

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Manuscript ID RFMS-2017-0114.R2

Manuscript Type: Original paper

girlpower, postfeminism, affect, femininity, feminism, post-recessional

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Keywords:
television

Feminist scholars have begun to unpack the ways in which neoliberalism is

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underpinned by particular gendered affective investments: drives for

perfection (Angela McRobbie 2015), confidence (Rosalind Gill and Shani
Orgad 2015), and the careful observance of feeling rules mandating a
pleasing balance of resilience and approachability (Akane Kanai 2017a). In
this context, we are interested in mapping representations of affective
dissonances (Clare Hemmings 2012) with neoliberal modes of thriving. We
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draw attention to post-recessional television made by and about young

women that articulate dissonance with the confident subjectivities
Abstract: associated with neoliberal cultural mythologies of girlpower. Our analysis
aims at two-fold consideration of: first, how giving voice to young women
as “suffering actors” (Harris and Dobson 2015) may open space for
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“dissonant” affective positions that connect to feminist aims of social

transformation (Hemmings 2012); and second, consideration of the ways
in which exclusionary “technologies of femininity” may also operate
through representations of young women’s anger, insecurity, and anxiety.
Through this analysis we contribute to understanding dialectical tensions in
the psychic and affective life of postfeminism and feminine subjectification
in the neoliberal, post-recessional socio-cultural context.

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5 From “can-do” girls to insecure and angry: Affective dissonances in young women’s post-
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recessional media
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9 Amy Shields Dobson,
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11 Lecturer, School of Media, Creative Art and Social Inquiry (MCASI); Internet Studies Dept;
12 Curtin University
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14 Amy.dobson@curtin.edu.au (corresponding author)
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20 Akane Kanai,
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22 akane.kanai@gmail.com
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Lecturer, School of Media, Journalism and Film; Media and Communication Dept; Monash
25 University
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Abstract
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32 Feminist scholars have begun to unpack the ways in which neoliberalism is
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34 underpinned by particular gendered affective investments: drives for perfection (Angela
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36 McRobbie 2015), confidence (Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad 2015), and the careful
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observance of feeling rules mandating a pleasing balance of resilience and approachability
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39 (Akane Kanai 2017a). In this context, we are interested in mapping the cultural production
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41 of affective dissonances (Clare Hemmings 2012) with neoliberal modes of thriving. We draw
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43 attention to post-recessional television made by and about young women that articulate
44 affective dissonances with the confident subjectivities associated with neoliberal cultural
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46 mythologies of girlpower. We suggest that within recent, largely US, television some
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48 important questioning of such mythologies is taking place through the articulation of young
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women’s anger, insecurity, anxiety, and misplaced confidence. Such affective dissonances
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51 may to some extent serve to problematise myths about both the accessibility and appeal of
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53 highly individualist career-oriented lifestyles idealised in cultural mythologies of powerful
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55 “can-do” girls (Anita Harris 2004). Our analysis aims at two-fold consideration of: first, how
56 giving voice to young women as “suffering actors” (Harris and Dobson 2015) may open
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3 space for dissonant affective positions that connect to feminist aims of social
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5 transformation (Hemmings 2012); and second, consideration of the ways in which
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exclusionary technologies of femininity may also operate through representations of young
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8 women’s anger, insecurity, and anxiety. Through this analysis we contribute to
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10 understanding dialectical tensions in the psychic and affective life of postfeminism and
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12 feminine subjectification in the neoliberal, post-recessional socio-cultural context.
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16 Key words: girlpower, postfeminism, affect, femininity, post-recessional television,
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18 feminism, neoliberalism
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Introduction: affectively divesting in neoliberalism and girlpower?
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25 In examining recessionary culture, Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker (2014) consider
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27 how hard-won gains in terms of gender, race, and class are being undone in complex ways.
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29 While women are increasingly asked to “lean in” in times of austerity, Negra and Tasker
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(2014) note that feminine qualities of care are often repudiated in terms like the “nanny
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32 state” in favour of masculine virtues such as toughness and authority. Further, as they
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34 suggest, much media coverage that does take note of economic downturn tends to focus on
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36 the loss and suffering of (some) men. Negra and Tasker’s (2014) observations resonate with
37 the current context in which notorious promises to “Make America Great Again” aim to
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39 redress the loss of power of certain men who have historically enjoyed racial and
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41 geopolitical privileges, as well as re-assert America’s supremacy in a global economy. Such
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promises can be seen as coterminous with particular affective conditions in Western media
44 culture that close down ambivalence, and disarticulate the anger, dissent, and
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46 disappointment of nondominant people. Yet, at the same time as this rise of
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48 authoritarianism and securitisation, it has been observed that feminism is enjoying a form of
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renewal. Angela McRobbie suggests that “feminism once again has a presence across the
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51 quality and popular media, and similarly in political culture and in civil society” (2015, 4) –
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53 and in celebrity culture in particular. Hannah Hamad and Anthea Taylor (2015) note that
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55 recent media culture has been “littered with touchstone moments” that have seen some of
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3 the highest profile female celebrities, as well as many male celebrities, openly identify as
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5 feminist (2015, 124).
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This article begins by outlining how feminist scholars have understood the recent
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9 visibility of feminism in mainstream, commercial postfeminist media culture. Feminism’s
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11 renewal via media cultures has raised concurrent concerns about its ties to neoliberal
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13 subjectivities and agendas (Catherine Rottenberg 2014), and the continuing unevenness in
14 which feminism appears in media, favouring “cool” feminism (McRobbie 2015) and
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16 confident, fun-loving girls, over a feminism driven by anger and uncertainty in relation to
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18 social injustice and inequality (Rosalind Gill 2016). We then chart recent feminist media and
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cultural analyses with a focus on the “psychic and affective life” of postfeminism (Gill, 2017),
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21 highlighting the importance of positive affects in women and girl-centred media and cultural
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forms — namely, confidence (Gill and Orgad, 2015), empowerment (Banet-Weiser),
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25 shamelessness (Dobson, 2015) and resilience (Kanai 2017a). Drawing on this scholarship,
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we suggest that what may be observed in the current conjuncture is a set of broad cultural
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28 conditions that visibly connect mediated feminism to “upbeat” and “confident” modes of
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30 subjectivity well-suited to navigating neoliberal structures, dynamics, and “feeling rules”

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32 (Kanai, 2017a). Such “feeling rules” dovetail with the broader logics of self-belief, positive
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33 thinking, and the pursuit of happiness noted as pervasive in recent neoliberal and
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35 meritocratic cultural discourses of self-making (Ahmed 2010; Berlant 2011; Littler 2018;
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37 Silva 2013). They also dovetail with the suggested monetary value of expressions of positive
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emotions via social media platform-driven “attention” and “like” economies (Rachel
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40 Berryman and Misha Kavka 2018). This leads us to ask: how might “divestment” in
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42 neoliberalism be connected with gendered cultural formations of disappointment,

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44 frustration, insecurity, anxiety, and anger?
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In exploring this question here, we analyse some recent popular “post-recessional”
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48 (Lauren De Carvalho 2013) television made by and about young women. Much prominent
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50 and popular female-centred post-recessional television appears to be about more than
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52 individual women’s empowerment through supposedly “meritocratic” (Jo Littler, 2018)
53 structures and positive feelings of confidence, and has, to some extent, popularised an
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55 insecure, anxious, and ambivalent young female figure. The shows discussed depict
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3 premises and narratives that, on some level, connect young women’s insecurities, anxieties,
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5 and frustrations to a recessionary neoliberal environment with some reinvigorated
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awareness of structural inequalities, rather than only to individual lack or failure. As such,
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8 we suggest they express some “affective dissonance” (Clare Hemmings 2012) with the
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10 upbeat feelings rules of neoliberalism and girlpower. However, we also explore how
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12 expressions of young women’s affective dissonance are socially structured, and how such
13 affective articulations may be a means of enacting distinction in youth-based cultures. We
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15 ask here about the dialectical functioning of this theorised “affective dissonance” in female-
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17 centred media and culture as both a potentially transformative voicing of young women’s
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suffering (Harris and Dobson, 2015) and its recuperation into neoliberal, postfeminist
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20 affective and psychic life.
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26 The contested reappearance of feminism in ‘postfeminist’ media cultures
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29 Media cultures have long been understood by feminist scholars as important spaces
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30 for the emergence of feminist discourse, debate, and contestation (Catharine Lumby 1997;;
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32 Sarah Banet-Weiser 2012), and there is currently extensive debate about the way in which
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34 feminism has reappeared in transnational media culture. Scholars have noted changes in
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relation to the way feminism has appeared without the traditional repudiation that has
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37 been critiqued as part of postfeminist media culture (Akane Kanai 2017b, Jessalynn Keller
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39 and Maureen Ryan, 2018). As Keller and Ryan note, the Global Financial Crisis that began in
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41 the United States in 2008 “has profoundly politicised many women and young people who
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experienced its disorganising effects firsthand” (2018, 14), engendering sensibilities open to
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44 and supportive of feminist politics. Several authors have questioned whether we are or
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46 should be moving past the “post” in postfeminist media studies (Lumby 2011) given the
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48 ongoing practice and renewed prominence of feminism within media and culture
49 transnationally, especially that created by girls and young women (Keller and Ryan 2018). In
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51 their comparative analysis of Sex and the City and Girls, Nash and Grant argue that a
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53 question-mark needs to be added to the “post” of postfeminism in recognition that many
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young women “are trying to position themselves between second wave feminism and post-
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3 feminism and in changed social, economic, and political contexts” (Meredith Nash and Ruby
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5 Grant 2015 13).
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A key point of contention regarding the current moment of celebration for feminism
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9 in media cultures then centres on its entanglements with neoliberalism, even as the
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11 struggles of negotiating a post-recessional social and economic environment increasingly
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13 bring the viability and legitimacy of neoliberalism into question. Catherine Rottenberg
14 (2014) has detailed the way recent feminist-oriented self-help books such as Sheryl
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16 Sandberg’s bestseller Lean In (2015) encourage women towards complete self-reliance,
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18 responsibilisation, and economic rationalism in their approach to care and family life, so
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that this kind of feminist message is inextricably bound up with a socially unjust neoliberal
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21 and meritocratic discursive ideology. Akane Kanai has argued that feminism is no longer so
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much repudiated as it is “useful for making affective claims about one’s fit within neoliberal
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25 middle class cultures, where discourses of feminist achievement and success are so
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incorporated that to repudiate feminism in a blanket way may be taken as a sign of

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28 ignorance.” (2017b, p. 251). Gill too suggests that “postfeminist logics currently operate
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30 through a celebration of (a certain kind of) feminism, rather that its repudiation” (2017,
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32 612). As such, she sees the term “postfeminism” as descriptive of a flexible, dynamic and
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33 adaptive media sensibility, and a “distinctive kind of gendered neoliberalism” that has
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35 become hegemonic over the last decade (2017, 611). Gill (2016) argues that new feminist
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37 visibilities in Western commercial media, celebrity, and fashion culture, and contemporary
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bestselling corporate self-help books are not matched with attention to more socially
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40 oriented issues of poverty, low pay, migration, health, education and social services (2016,
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42 624) that might move us more significantly past the “post”. Gill suggests that either white,
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44 able-bodied middle-class women or comfortably othered non-Western women’s causes gain
45 attention and tend to constitute a binary of feminist activity illuminated in postfeminist
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47 media culture (see also Ofra Koffman, Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill 2015; Sarah Banet-
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49 Weiser 2015).
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52 However, the politics and value of these kinds of visible, fashionable, popular, and
53 marketized forms of feminism are, significantly, debated extensively in various forms of
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55 commercial media, and have been questioned in press media and other cultural discourses
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3 for some time (Lumby, 1997, 2011). As Keller and Ringrose demonstrate, the fashionable
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5 nature of feminism and the tension between its renewed commodification and politics is
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something that is hotly debated by girls and young women themselves via blogs and
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8 feminist-oriented social media (Jessalynn Keller and Jessica Ringrose, 2015). Girls and young
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10 women are, they observe, not only consuming mediated, celebratory, watered down
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12 feminism, but are also “intent on shaping their own debates, producing their own media,
13 and negotiating the contradictions presented by celebrity feminism with a great deal of wit
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15 and sensitivity” (2015, p. 134). Anthea Taylor (2016) suggests that the marketization of
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17 feminist messages in and of itself does not negate the importance of such messages.
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Taylor’s work maps the “celebrity feminist” and the “feminist blockbuster” book not as
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20 exclusively recent phenomena, but as part of the broader cultural context that has shaped
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22 feminist agendas and understandings of feminism transnationally since the latter half of the
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24 20th century, sometimes widening the accessibility of key feminist ideas. Similarly, Weidhase
25 (2015) argues in relation to media debate about Beyonce’s self-identification as a feminist
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27 that such attempts to reclaim “the black female body and sexuality” as well as to “move
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29 feminism beyond the walls of academia through the privileging of popular culture” (2015, p.
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130) need to be contextualised culturally and historically rather than discredited.
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36 Theorising youthful femininity and affect in neoliberal culture
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39 Feminist media scholars are increasingly paying attention to the “affective and psychic life”
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41 of postfeminism (Gill 2017), and the implications of this for feminist politics, and for girls
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and women. Recent analyses of postfeminist media cultural forms contribute to
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44 understanding the way feminism’s renewal in the postfeminist media context has become
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46 tied up with overwhelmingly positive, confident, and upbeat “feelings rules” for girls and
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48 women (Kanai 2017). Rosalind Gill and Shani Orgad (2015) argue that in this media context
49 of intertwined feminist and anti-feminist ideas, “confidence” for women has been
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51 positioned as a key technology of the self. They suggest that via commercial media address
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53 to women, confidence is promoted as a feminist tool women must use to “value”
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themselves, while it also remains a disciplinary mechanism through which women are
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56 individually made responsible for their lack of ability to resolve social gendered injustices.
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3 Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) too outlines the media address to girls and young women via
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5 discourses promoting “girlpower”, confidence, and self-esteem, and she maps the market
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development of girl-targeted “empowerment” programs aimed at fostering such. In a
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8 context in which for young women “empowerment” has been conflated with constant
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10 media visibility (Banet-Weiser, 2012), and relatedly, heavy social media participation is often
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12 culturally and socially demanded, Amy Dobson (2015) suggests that a strikingly confident
13 “performative shamelessness” becomes a prominent mode of self-representation by young
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15 women via social media profiles. She suggests that “performative shamelessness” in self-
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17 representation may be employed by girls and young women as a kind of psychological and
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affective shield against an assumedly critical peer audience, as well as critical adult
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20 surveillance. Postfeminist commercial and social media messages about women’s and girls’
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22 responsibility for their own empowerment tend to emphasise feeling rules of self-belief,
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24 savviness, and the ability to instrumentalise “positive” emotions while downplaying

25 “negative” ones, Kanai (2017a) suggests. In her analysis of popular memes circulated by
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27 young women on Tumblr, Kanai shows how girls and young women skilfully reformulate
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29 significant life obstacles and gendered insecurities into humorous memes and “upbeat
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quips in the genre of safe, funny ‘girlfriendly’ material” (Kanai 2017a, p.1). Kanai (2017a)
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32 argues that normative youthful femininity is lived “not simply as a set of life regulations, but
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34 as a set of ‘feeling rules’” that shape the manner in which young women articulate gendered
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36 burdens and manage the contradictions of messages about feminism’s re-emergence and
37 women’s empowerment within harsh neoliberal, post-recessional social and economic
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39 conditions.
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41 McRobbie argues that the psychic cost of newly cool feminism for young women is
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that it is attached to an “ethos of competitive individualism” (2015, 4). This individualism is
44 internalized by young women, she suggests, who are now in inner-directed competition
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46 with themselves for “perfection,” understood as the quest to “have it all” in terms of career,
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48 domestic, and familial success, as well as bodily/sexual attractiveness. Solidarity,
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collectivism, and welfarist feminism are eschewed and relegated to the past, McRobbie
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51 argues, through this regulatory address to young women mandating perfection. This
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53 address produces a female subject in a state of constant self-criticism, “competitive” with
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55 herself (2015, 15) so as to leave gender hierarchies “more or less” intact in the social world
56 (2015, 16). She writes:
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3 [O]ne outcome is this “can do and must do better” ethos which is brought into close
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5 proximity with the deeply individualising forces of modern times and then, hey
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presto, made compatible with being a modern day young feminist who will excel at
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8 school and make her way to the boardroom in years to come. (2015, 17).
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11 For McRobbie, despite the re-emergence and recent visibility of feminism as a tool for
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13 addressing gendered inequalities, in the contemporary media landscape “we find all ideas of
14 gender justice and collective solidarity thrown overboard in favour of ‘excellence’ and with
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16 the aim of creating new forms (and restoring old forms) of gender hierarchies through
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18 competition and elitism” (2015, 17). Further, anger directed at male domination, McRobbie
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suggests, is still “conspicuously absent” (2015, 17) due to the risk of its association with the
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21 abject figure of the radical feminist. Accordingly, a key affective mechanism through which
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feminism and capitalist advancement are integrated, McRobbie argues, is the self-directed
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25 aggression and competition that young women are asked to deploy as “strategic” in getting
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ahead.
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29 The “psychic and affective life” of postfeminism (Gill 2017) has in sum been
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31 theorised as one which relentlessly demands a confident, upbeat, pleasing, and happy
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33 affective state from young women. Gill argues that postfeminist media culture not only
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“favours” happiness and “positive mental attitude”, but “systematically outlaw[s] other
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36 emotional states, including anger and insecurity” (Gill 2017, p. 610). Via such positive
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38 address to girls and young women, we can observe significant discursive displacement of
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40 their suffering (Harris and Dobson 2015). They are invited to reformulate potentially
41 crippling gendered insecurities and social disadvantages as manageable, pleasingly minor
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43 problems, rather than acknowledge failure, loss, and frustration within a punishing
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45 neoliberal system (Kanai 2017a). Indeed, striving for confidence, resilience, and perfection
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potentially demands an exhausting emotional hypervigilance over the acceptance of
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48 frustrations and dissatisfactions as legitimate responses to personal hardship and social
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50 injustice. Drawing on these insights, we can see how the reproduction of neoliberalism in a
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52 media context where feminist discourses are newly prominent and cool may operate via the
53 affective register, reinforcing an individualistic self-sustaining logic; even, and particularly,
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3 for marginalised and under-privileged young people negotiating a post-recessional terrain
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5 (Jennifer Silva 2013).
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8 However, in relation to this theorisation of the affective and psychic life of
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10 postfeminism, we suggest there is a need to better account for less upbeat expressions and
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12 representation made by and about young women within popular and widespread media
13 forms. We do so here, as stated above, in relation to recent, largely US-produced, television.
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15 We are driven by the question: What does it mean, in this “upbeat” media context, that
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17 there is also a body of popular television created by and about young women via “quality
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TV” networks like HBO and Netflix (Sean Fuller and Catherine Driscoll, 2015), that have
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20 popularised the figure of the unconfident, anxious, and insecure girl? Are negative emotions
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22 such as insecurity and anger “outlawed” in postfeminist cultural forms, or are they
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24 permissible, even cool, in some forms and when mobilised by some bodies, in socially
25 structured ways?
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31 Affective dissonance and ugly feelings in feminism, and female-centred television
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34 We suggest that paying more detailed attention to the representation in popular
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culture of more negative, ambivalent emotions by young women is important in terms of
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37 better understanding dialectical tensions within postfeminism. That is, our analysis aims to
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39 provoke twofold consideration of how giving voice to young women as “suffering actors”
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41 (Harris and Dobson 2015) may open space for dissonant affective positions that connect to
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feminist aims of social transformation (Hemmings 2012); as well as consideration of how
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44 exclusionary technologies of femininity (Adrienne Evans and Sarah Riley 2015) may be
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46 operating via the affective register through the representation of young women’s insecurity,
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48 anxiety, anger, frustration, and ambivalence. McRobbie (2015) suggests that overall, the
49 kind of affective regulation of femininity via media cultures discussed so far has negative
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51 political implications; that these psychic conditions of demanded outward confidence and
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53 internal self-competition disable, rather than reinvigorate more collectivist politics, and
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female solidarity. However, following feminist work on affect such as that by Hemmings
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56 (2012) and Ahmed (2017), we wonder about the ways in which the kind of “ugly feelings”
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3 (Ngai 2005) that perhaps fester and bubble up in women’s culture in such harsh social and
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5 psychic conditions also move us towards feminist consciousness and “affective divestment”
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in neoliberalism. According to Ngai (2005), “ugly feelings” are marginal, noncathartic (they
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8 do not result in any kind of therapeutic release), and do not lend themselves easily to
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10 instrumentalisation, unlike the confidence and empowerment discussed so far. In seeking
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12 to more fully map dialectical tensions in the affective and psychic life of postfeminism, it
13 seems important, firstly, to understand the possibilities in popular, commercial culture that
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15 give space and voice to affective dissonance and dissent by women. At the same time, and
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17 as part of the same project, it is critical to question how representations of young women’s
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negative emotions too may be instrumentalised, recouped, and “accounted for”, and within
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20 postfeminist and neoliberal logics.
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To briefly expand on the notion of “affective dissonance” as we mobilise it in our
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25 analysis, Hemmings’ argues that “[I]n order to know differently we have to feel differently”
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(2012, 150). A feminist politics, Hemmings suggests, necessarily begins from an affective
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28 dissonance that must be felt in order to imagine alternatives beyond the forms of life
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30 produced through structural inequalities. The dissonance where one feels misrecognised,
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32 undervalued, or out of place, Hemmings, suggests, can produce a politicisation, a movement
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33 towards affective solidarity in occupying an orientation towards social transformation. Such

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35 dissonance produces possibilities of feminist reflexivity (Elspeth Probyn 1993), an
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37 epistemological outlook that is attentive to gaps between, on the one hand, one’s lived
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experience and sense of self, and on the other, established modes of judging that
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40 self/experience. In making these arguments, the notion of feminist reflexivity provides ways
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42 of doing feminism, privileging feminism as activity or process that is not reliant on a fixed
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44 identity position (Hemmings 2012).
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Hemmings’ arguments align with other important feminist work that theorises affect
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48 as a means of attachment to, or rupture with, an existing social order (Sara Ahmed 2010,
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50 2017; Lauren Berlant 2011). Dissonance, we suggest, is crucial in disrupting processes that
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52 promote girls’ and women’s affective investment in patriarchal, neoliberal social systems. As
53 such, in examining mediated culture that connects feminine subjectivities to more socially-
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55 oriented feminist possibilities through affects that are discordant with confidence,
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3 empowerment, and perfection, we have adopted a framework for understanding affect that
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5 allows us to think through subjectivity and its links with structured forms of inequality. We
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focus analysis on the spaces where dissonance is expressed, and where audiences might be
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8 afforded affective positions through which the kind of feminist reflexivity emphasised by
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10 Probyn (2003) and Hemmings (2012) might be exercised.
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13 There seems to be a highpoint of individualistic and neoliberal ideals, epitomised in
14 shows such as the breakthrough Sex and the City (SATC), that post-recessional television is
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16 now eschewing, to some extent. Themes of sexual empowerment, choice, mobility, and
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18 consumption synonymous with SATC are still dominant in reality and lifestyle television
19
(Sofia Elias, Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff 2017; Bev Skeggs and Helen Wood 2012), as
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21 well as in discourses of digital branding (Banet-Weiser 2012; Dobson 2015). Yet, the
22
23
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exuberant individualism of SATC, described as “a post-feminist narrative par excellence”
24
25 (Nash and Grant 2015, 3), is arguably less prominent in recent women-centred TV comedies
26
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and dramadies such as Girls, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Insecure, Broad City, Jane the Virgin, The
27
28 Mindy Project, Orange is the New Black as well as the UK shows Chewing Gum, Fleabag, and
29
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30 Can’t Cope Won’t Cope. There has been a noticeable affective shift in mediated femininity
31
32 concurrent with the onset of recessionary culture, and some questioning and reflection on
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33 the cultural mythology of neoliberal girlpower is taking place within such television, created
34
35 by and about young women. We perceive in these shows narratives, premises, and
36
37 affective tones that crack the shiny veneer of girlpowered neoliberal mythologies of
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women’s career “success” as accessible, meritocratic, and “chosen” by individuals through
39
40 cultivating feelings and performances of confidence, self-esteem, and empowerment. We
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42 discuss four key examples of post-recessional shows created by and about young women:
43
44 Broad City, Girls, Insecure, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. In order to limit our discussion here, we
45 focus our analysis on the representation of young women’s working life, and moments of
46
47 affective dissonance within it, as an element of subjectivity deemed key to the attainment
48
49 of girl-powered “success” (Harris 2004) and the “perfect” (McRobbie 2015). Work is one of
50
51
the elements of life and subjectivity most obviously impacted by the Global Financial Crisis
52 and neoliberal conditions of intensified casualisation, unemployment, and precarity, and an
53
54 area where we can note significant shifts in post-recessional cultural representations.
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56 Disappointment, frustration, and dissatisfaction in working life constitute a repeated theme
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1
2
3 across these shows, demonstrating the difficulties of managing precisely the domains in
4
5 which young women have been positioned as neoliberal “success stories” (Anita Harris
6
2004).
7
8
9
10
11 The disappointments and frustrations of young women’s working life in women-
12
13 centred post-recessional TV
14
15
In stark contrast to SATC, insecure, low-paid, and mostly unfulfilling or demeaning
16
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17 work provides the backdrop and much narrative content for several shows created by and
18
19 about the lives of young women in a post-recessional context. These shows often speak to
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20
21 the disappointment and frustration of young women, having played by the “can-do” girl
22 rules and strived for “perfection” (McRobbie 2015), only to find their choices much more
23
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24 limited and their futures less secure than they have been led to believe. For example, in
25
26 Broad City, a comedy about the best friendship of two young Jewish women living in New
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28
York City, the link between ambition, industriousness and its connection to dignified,
29 satisfying work is humorously problematised and sometimes actively mocked. Abbi works
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31 as a cleaner at Soulstice Gym, and Ilana in a sales company called “Deal Deals Deals”. While
32
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33 Abbi tries hard to progress in her dream to work either as an artist, or as a trainer at
34
Soulstice, she is constantly overlooked, and tasked with jobs such as removing vomit and
35
36 pubic hair from the bathrooms. In the first episode of the series, not having enough extra
37
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38 money to attend a pop-up Lil Wayne concert, Abbi and Ilana take a one-off job found online
39
40 cleaning a man’s apartment in their underwear, only to be left unpaid when the man
41 pretends to be a baby unable to understand their demand for money.
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42
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44 In Broad City, we can note that displays of professional confidence by these young
45
46 women provide comic fodder: confidence in their own abilities regularly backfires or is
47
48 punished, rather than rewarded with material or personal gains. For example, Ilana’s
49 bravado and blithe confidence in her ability to produce on-brand eye-catching social media
50
51 content for her employer results in her prompt dismissal by her markedly unconfident,
52
53 geeky and ineffectual male boss, after she posts an image depicting bestiality on the
54
company’s Twitter feed (Season 3, episode 3). However, it is primarily through Abbi’s
55
56 misadventures that we witness failures to embody a ‘top girl’ ideal. In Season 3, when Abbi
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1
2
3 has recently been promoted to the position of trainer at Soulstice, she has the opportunity
4
5 to compete in the employee ‘Soulstice Games’. What should be an opportunity to
6
demonstrate her athletic excellence and solidify her new upwardly mobile status, turns into
7
8 a farce as Abbi’s excessively competitive streak leads her to assault another colleague. While
9
10 the top girl is notably competitive with herself and other women (McRobbie 2015), Abbi is
11
12 unable to perfect the aggressive-yet-non-threatening affective balance of the top girl, taking
13 the competition visibly, embarrassingly, too far. More broadly, when Abbi experiencing a
14
15 state of confidence, her affective orientation is often noticeably disconnected from her
16
Fo
17 material reality. In Season 4, during a severe bout of unemployment, Abbi feels on the top
18
of the world when Ilana gifts her a very stylish but also extremely expensive handbag. The
19
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20 handbag works as a kind of talisman: despite her general state of insecurity attached to
21
22 being unemployed, Abbi confidently waltzes into an interview in the upmarket women’s
23
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24 clothing and lifestyle store, Anthropologie, and is offered a job. She is subsequently mugged
25 – her beautiful bag is taken – and when she begins at Anthropologie, instead of working as
26
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27 an elegant retail assistant, she is assigned to work as a security guard. Abbi’s hope of
28
29 working in a glamorous albeit still casualised and low-paid job remains out of reach. In this
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episode, as in the show more generally, young women’s disappointment, sense of missing
31
32 out, and misplaced self-confidence drives the comedic narrative, as well as the affective
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34 tone.
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37 Created by self-identified feminist Lena Dunham, Girls is one of the most
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prominently discussed examples of a more reflexive and ambivalent register in
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40 contemporary post-recession TV (De Carvalho 2013). In part, this may be because Girls is
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42 comparable with SATC in some obvious ways (Nash and Grant 2015). It revolves around the
43
44 lives of four, white, upper-middle class women living in New York, yet it depicts a very
45 different set of feminine subjectivities and social circumstances. Compared to the women of
46
47 SATC, the Girls are “similarly white and entitled but unambitious, mostly unemployed, and
48
49 financially unstable” (Nash and Grant 2015, 4). Several key story arcs are about the
50
51
frustrations and disappointments of working life, as the realities fall short of imagined
52 “dream job” trajectories for most of these girls. In marked contrast to SATC, which
53
54 represented firm, fun, female friendships and ascendant careers that matched the traits of
55
56 each woman’s personality, Girls exemplifies the disappointments and humiliations often
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1
2
3 associated with striving for security and fulfilment in the neoliberal, post-recessional context
4
5 (Bell 2013), particularly through the journey of protagonist Hannah. Hannah’s trajectory
6
throughout Girls is punctuated by scenes of her either quitting or being fired from jobs she
7
8 has quickly become disillusioned with or failed to meet the requirements. Significant
9
10 moments of frustration, dissatisfaction, and disappointment propel Hannah’s narrative
11
12 journey, as she faces the realities of finding fulfilling work in what is portrayed as a world
13 that is, in contrast to her ideals and expectations, still overwhelmingly patriarchal and often
14
15 sexist, competitive, ruthlessly profit-driven, and conservative.
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18 For example, in Season 1, Hannah is fired from an unpaid internship in the first
19
episode, after she asks for a paid position. In Episode 4 she takes a secretarial position at a
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21 law firm. In a story-arc in that does much to set the foundations for Hannah’s character,
22
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Hannah discovers that her middle-aged, overweight, yet somewhat endearing boss, Rich,
24
25 routinely touches his young female staff when Rich begins to massage her at her desk and
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lay “friendly” hands on her shoulders or bottom as she encounters him about the office. He
27
28 asks her “Now you’ll tell me if the touching ever bothers you, right? I’m just a touchy kind of
29
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30 guy.” She is shocked and confused about how to respond, and consults her two female co-
31
32 workers, who counsel Hannah supportively, telling her they “know it’s gross” but “you’ll get
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33 used to it”. They advise Hannah that Rich is “really nice” and generous with providing family
34
35 benefits, gifts, and a relaxed attitude towards time off for family commitments. Her co-
36
37 workers are Latina, expertly groomed, and hyper-feminine in their embodiment and style.
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They end the discussion by offering to fix Hannah’s girlish and “weird” eyebrows.
39
40
41 Hannah’s audacious and sexually confident friend Jessa advises Hannah flippantly
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43 that she should sleep with her boss “for the story”. Prompted by this advice and Hannah’s
44
45 desire to feel more grown up and sexually adventurous, Hannah offers herself to her boss.
46
She tells him that this is the kind of thing “adults” do, because “I am gross, and so are you.”
47
48 In this scene, Hannah is clearly daring herself to go through with the seduction, despite her
49
50 obvious disgust at Rich. When he laughingly rejects her and reveals he is not seriously
51
52 interested in sleeping with her, that it would be “inappropriate”, she is humiliated and
53 angry. Her bold affective veneer crumbles momentarily, before transforming into anger.
54
55 She then threatens to sue Rich for sexual harassment and tells him she is quitting her job.
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3 Rich again laughs at Hannah. With a patronising but not contemptuous tone he tells her he
4
5 doesn’t think she could manage to sue him, that “There’s not an app on your iphone for
6
that”. He calmly and affectionately advises Hannah that they can get “past this” and that he
7
8 would like her to stay, noting her intellectual potential. “Think about it?” he asks Hannah.
9
10 She pauses to consider her response and appears to “choose” a reply driven by her anger at
11
12 Rich’s behaviour and the confusion and humiliation it has caused her. She tells Rich furiously
13 “I’m so glad you’re not my dad or my boyfriend.” She then threatens before storming out of
14
15 his office, “And someday, I’m gonna write an essay about you. And I’m NOT going to change
16
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17 your name! And then you can sue ME.” It is clear in this scene that despite her misguided
18
attempt to seduce him, Hannah is not self-blaming. Rather, she can see Rich’s behaviour
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20 and her own confused responses to it in the broader social context of ongoing patriarchal
21
22 gendered power imbalances. Space for the representation of her affective dissonance with
23
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24 older, patriarchal workplace standards of sexism may have opened up for a broader
25 audience in the post-recessional context. We suggest audiences are invited to sympathise
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27 with Hannah’s indignant response here, yet with the humour and ambivalence that
28
29 characterise the show.
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32 This story also marks out Hannah’s identity as distinct from her working-class Latina
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33 co-workers in key ways. Hannah is not “confident” in her feminine embodiment or sexuality.
34
35 However, this story constructs her character as idealistic, somewhat naïve, and comically
36
37 over-confident in her perceived abilities to fight social injustice by filing a class-action suit
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for sexual harassment against her lawyer boss. Hannah’s Latina co-workers by contrast are
39
40 not articulate about sexual politics, but portrayed as confident “experts” in the aesthetics of
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42 feminine grooming. Following Kanai (2017b), a kind of feminist-oriented anger is drawn

43
44 upon here. Affective responses of anger and frustration with outdated men and powerful
45 patriarchal systems that still constitute neoliberal work environments are not only
46
47 permissible in this context, but to some extent mandated as normatively cool and hip for
48
49 Hannah as an educated, white, middle-class woman. This may be especially the case in a
50
51
post-recessional context of more obviously unfulfillable promises to young women of
52 success as tied to self-belief. The outwardly directed anger and frustration mobilised here
53
54 and throughout the series by Hannah is not so easily accessed by less privileged characters;
55
56 and further, we suggest, may not often construct a cool and hip feminine identity, as distinct
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1
2
3 from a sad and pathological one, when embodied by women more marginalised on the basis
4
5 of a race, class, size, ability, or gender identity. In the next episode (Season 1, episode 6),
6
Hannah’s parents offer to resume supporting her financially, and she turns down their offer
7
8 and takes a coffee shop job with her friend Ray. Through this rejection of her parent’s
9
10 support Hannah’s class privilege is somewhat disavowed in the logic of the show. Her anger
11
12 and her financially risky response to it are signalled as not significantly connected to her
13 class privilege, somewhat naturalising Hannah’s indignant affective response to this
14
15 situation, in a manner that we suggest applies in relation to Hannah’s character in Girls
16
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17 more broadly.
18
19
Moments of anger, frustration, disappointment, and affective dissonance at work
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21 are also regularly portrayed in Insecure, albeit somewhat differently through protagonist
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Issa. In Insecure, created by Issa Rae, Issa works for a well-meaning but ineffective education
24
25 program for at-risk black and minority youth called “We Got Y’all”. She is the only black
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employee among a team of generally well-meaning but ignorant white staff, and her ideas
27
28 are consistently misinterpreted or not heard. Disappointments, frustrations, and dead-ends
29
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30 in work are a reoccurring theme in this show. It is worth noting that Issa Rae describes the
31
32 show’s premise and central character not so much as a response to mythologies of
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33 “girlpower” as to longstanding stereotypes of black femininity, saying that “So much of the
34
35 media now presents blackness as being cool, or able to dance, or fierce and flawless, or just
36
37 out of control; I’m not any of those things.” (Rae, quoted in Mulkerrins 2017). Issa’s
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insecurity, frustrations, and inability to confidently express herself in critical moments are
39
40 portrayed in dream sequences that show a contrast between her optimistic thoughts and
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42 expectations – involving confidence, smooth sailing, and the right choices – and the
43
44 disappointments, mistakes, and ruptures of real life. Her disappointments play out notably
45 through her working life as a young black woman in a white-dominated charity. Her
46
47 coworkers make little time to understand the black youth they purportedly attempt to help.
48
49 The gap between a normative, confident self, and Issa’s own reactions to situations, are
50
51
dramatised through scenes where the hoped-for bold retorts she imagines delivering in
52 response to her white colleagues’ racism remain just that – imagined. Issa is represented as
53
54 a smart, capable young woman who regularly experiences disappointment, frustration, and
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1
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3 anger in response to the unconscious racism and ineffectual systems around her, as well as
4
5 wasted ideas and unrecognised contributions in her professional life.
6
7
In this show, Issa’s insecurity functions as a mechanism for social critique. Issa’s
8
9 disarticulation, even as an otherwise expressive, middle-class, educated woman – her very
10
11 inability to say confidently what she feels—speaks subtly but powerfully to the silencing
12
13 effects of racism. This portrayal contrasts poignantly with the representations of white
14 young women’s comically misplaced and over-articulated confidence in Girls and Broad City.
15
16 Similarly, Issa’s best friend Molly’s own confident façade of sexuality masks a greater
Fo
17
18 uncertainty as to her life goals and judgments as a young black woman. Molly is presented
19
as another kind of top girl: she is a high achiever in terms of career. Working in a corporate
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21 law firm, she is smart, ambitious and immaculately dressed at all times. Yet, the show
22
23
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undercuts this thin representation of individualised success by highlighting the reality of
24
25 being a black ‘top girl’ in a white-dominated firm. Showing the immense emotional and
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professional labour required to demonstrate her value, viewers are often shown the ways
27
28 that the otherwise glamorous and charismatic Molly is rendered awkward by the white,
29
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30 masculine culture mandating enthusiasm for certain sports, forms of small talk, and other
31
32 signifiers of fitting in.
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34
Insecurities, frustrations, and disappointments in this show are not often the main
35
36 source of comedy; nor are they presented as endearing, cute or hip when embodied by
37
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38 these black female characters. Rather, these character’s affective experiences are linked to
39
40 structural racism and substantive post-recessional social problems. A feminist-oriented
41 anger is strikingly present in Insecure, we suggest; but it is not represented as able to be
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42
43 articulated easily or confidently by the main characters in this show at critical moments.
44
45 Negative affects are portrayed here most often through Issa’s raps to herself in the
46
bathroom mirror, and through her fantasy sequences satirically juxtaposed with her lived
47
48 reality. Frustration, anger, and disappointment are presented as affectively dissonant
49
50 experiences that must be carefully tempered and managed in the work context by Issa and
51
52 Molly. Compared to the kind of feminine subjectivity embodied by Hannah in Girls, negative
53 affects are somewhat less key to the socially performed femininity of Issa and Molly, as
54
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1
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3 young black women, combatting as they must in daily life multiple and intersecting levels of
4
5 discrimination.
6
7
Insecure, Girls, and Broad City problematise not only the availability of glamorous,
8
9 exciting careers as “choices” for women in a supposed meritocracy, but also, to varying
10
11 extents, the liveability and desirability of neoliberal, girl-powered professional and material
12
13 “success” in ways that may not have been as culturally legible before the Global Financial
14 Crisis. This questioning of desirability occurs notably in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, starring Rachel
15
16 Bloom, and created by Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s very premise
Fo
17
18 is that glamorous, high-powered professional success in the ruthless neoliberal
19
cosmopolitan is unliveable and must be escaped. This is set up in the first episode of the
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21 series. Protagonist Rebecca, in a sleep-deprived, over-worked, and over-medicated state,
22
23
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finds out she is just about to be promoted to partner at her prestigious New York City law
24
25 firm. Her initial excitement quickly turns to extreme panic in a moment of overwhelming
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affective dissonance and confusion. This moment is intensified by a butter commercial

27
28 Rebecca suddenly notices, portrayed as a message of divine, other-worldy origins, that
29
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30 reads “Ask yourself when was the last time you were truly happy”. Rebecca responds by
31
32 running onto the street, hyperventilating, fumbling for her anxiety medication, and
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33 anxiously repeating to herself “This is great. This is just what happy feels like.” Outside on
34
35 the street she runs into her teenage summer-camp boyfriend, Josh, who tells her that after
36
37 failing to make a life for himself in New York, he is moving back to his home town, West
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Covina, where, he says, people are “happy”. Rebecca’s questioning of her own life
39
40 trajectory in this moment gives rise to a new whimsical fantasy of pursuing a relationship
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42 with Josh, and ultimate happiness, in West Covina. She rejects her promotion, quits, and
43
44 moves to inland California. This decision is portrayed as motivated by the fantasy of
45 pursuing Josh, but significantly, made in the context of feeling stifled and unhappy living the
46
47 ruthless, competitive life of the confident, successful can-do girl, working long hours, and
48
49 striving for “perfection” every day.
50
51
52 Rebecca’s new firm in West Covina is presented as unglamorous, unsophisticated,
53 and unchallenging, suburban and drab in both its décor and its staff, yet in line with
54
55 Rebecca’s desire for a more emotionally and physically sustainable life. Rebecca is shown
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1
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3 flushing her medications for anxiety and depression down the sink upon her arrival in West
4
5 Covina, in the hope that these medications will not be needed in her new, less-pressured,
6
life. Yet, her anxieties do not disappear in West Covina. Josh, who is already in a long-term
7
8 relationship, is a romantic object that Rebecca is at times self-aware enough to see as
9
10 misplaced, somewhat delusional, and also unethical. Rebecca’s life changes are clearly
11
12 driven by a deeper desire for a life that is less focused on material wealth and success, and
13 centred more on personal relationships and mundane, simple pleasures. However, the
14
15 powerful cultural mythology of success and happiness tied to her previous life in New York
16
Fo
17 makes this difficult for her to see clearly. Her constant questioning of her own motives,
18
drives, and decisions, as well as how to represent them to others in ways that make her
19
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20 socially legible rather than “crazy” does, indeed, make her feel and often appear “crazy,”
21
22 anxious, and depressed. Her supposedly impulsive decision to move to West Covina for no
23
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24 “good” reason other than Josh appears to others as strange and suspect—a clear refusal of
25 the normative trajectory for can-do girls of upward career mobility above all else. We
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27 suggest that neoliberal values are held up ambivalently here through Rebecca’s journey.
28
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32
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33 A note on anxiety, feminine psychopathology, and further research

34
35
Rebecca’s insecurities and anxieties, along with those of the other female
36
37 protagonists discussed (most notably Hannah in Girls) could also be read, following
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39 McRobbie (2009) as portrayals of normative gendered “psychopathology”. There is a fine
40
41 line between the articulation of young women’s anger, disappointment, insecurity, and
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42
anxiety as part of a normative, self-deprecating youthful postfeminist feminine
43
44 “masquerade” (Angela McRobbie 2009), and a problematisation or refusal of the confident,
45
46 top-girl veneer idealised in post-girlpower neoliberal culture. As such, the portrayal of
47
48 young women’s mental health in recent female-centred TV shows is perhaps a space where
49 the tension between a neoliberal affective orientation and the reflective questioning of such
50
51 is most apparent. This requires more detailed analysis than space affords us here. More
52
53 exploration is required in terms of the further cementing of young women’s “instituted and
54
normalised alienation” (2009, 17) via post-recessional television, as well as the way such
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1
2
3 representations may puncture the “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011) and taken-for-granted
4
5 happiness of neoliberal, can-do girl “success” trajectories.
6
7
Further, we suggest that there are prominent and significant representations of
8
9 anger, anxiety, and insecurity by young women within postfeminist media cultures across
10
11 several key media that need to be better accounted for in feminist media and cultural
12
13 scholarship. For example, some scholars have recently began to map and analyse the
14 prominence of negative emotional displays by young women online. Berryman and Kavka
15
16 (2018) analyse the increasing prominence of “crying vlogs” by influential beauty bloggers on
Fo
17
18 YouTube as a means of fostering connection and intimacy between vloggers and their
19
audience, despite the lower advertising revenue generated by such videos on this platform.
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21 Eileen Mary Holowka (2018) discusses the “sad girls of Instagram” as both a new chic
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23
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feminine trope and a vehicle for artistic expression and resistance by young women against
24
25 gender norms. Examining “pain meme” videos by girls on YouTube, Dobson has suggested
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(Dobson, 2015b) that such videos can be seen as important responses to and refusals of the
27
28 demand on young women to maintain a happy, confident girl-powerful public voice. Future
29
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30 research may fruitfully analyse affective dissonance in a range of cultural forms; particularly
31
32 expressions of anxiety, insecurity, and anger, by girls and young women via social media,
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33 through the vlogs and blogs of young micro-celebrities, as well as in explicitly feminist books
34
35 and blogs.
36
37
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39
40 Conclusion
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Through employing a framework influenced by Hemmings (2012) and Probyn (2003),
43
44 we have focused on the representation of negative emotions and affective dissonance in
45
46 post-recessional television made by and about young women. The nascent and subtle, as
47
48 well as more explicit, questioning of the availability and desirability of can-do girl “success”
49 in the neoliberal, post-recessional context is important for projects of feminism that aim
50
51 beyond the achievement of equality within existing capitalist models, for deeper and more
52
53 equitable social transformation. Our analysis responds to the problematisation of particular
54
affects by McRobbie (2015), Gill (2016), Banet-Weiser (2015), and Negra and Tasker (2014)
55
56 that potentially regulate girls and young women into a smooth, consistent fit with
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1
2
3 patriarchal, neoliberal culture. While much media culture favours an articulation of
4
5 feminism which operates within the parameters of capitalist strategies of profit and
6
accumulation, we have drawn attention to representations of young women’s working lives
7
8 that reflect on and explicitly question the normative feminine inward-oriented aggression
9
10 and outward-oriented confidence of neoliberal girlpower mythologies. We have analysed
11
12 how these representations turn away from injunctions to invest further labour, energy, and
13 emotion into myths of girlpowered success.
14
15
16 While the media discussed in this article also forms part of marketised culture, we
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17
18 suggest, following Taylor (2016), that this marketisation, in and of itself, does not negate the
19
importance of the affective positioning we explore. However, we see it as critical to analyse
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20
21 how affective dissonances and the generative feminist possibilities associated with such are
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23
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socially stratified in cultural formations and in social life, as we have begun to do here. We
24
25 have mapped some representations of young women’s anger, insecurity, and anxiety to try
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to illustrate some of the cultural momentum we perceive in the ways confident, girl-
27
28 powered femininity may be increasingly held to light as unviable and unliveable in the
29
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30 neoliberal, post-Global Financial Crisis era, analysing how such expressions of unliveability
31
32 and affective dissonance are socially structured and differentiated. This has been a
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33 necessarily broad overview of the possible openings generated through post-recessional

34
35 television made by and about young women; openings of some space for a feminist-
36
37 oriented anger and other “wrong”, “ugly” feelings, affective dissonances, and misplaced
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confidence. However, we hope that this provides a starting point for productive analyses of
39
40 the ways in which post-recessional media cultures potentially channel affect in ways that re-
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